When creating charts, users of charting programs (such as spreadsheet application programs, word processing application programs, and presentation application programs) often use formatting tools to give chart elements a consistent format so that charts have a professional and modern look. For instance, in many corporate environments standardized charting styles are developed in which all charts have a consistent theme (e.g., a predetermined combination of colors and fonts) for use across an organization. In order to format a chart, a user may select individual the elements and data series which make up a chart and manually format each selected element and data series in a piece-meal fashion until a consistent theme is developed.
In applying a previously created chart format to other charts, a user copy the chart having the desired format and paste the format of the copies chart onto a selected “target” chart. Alternatively, a user or organization may develop and deploy user-defined chart types to other users who wish to use the same format. The user-defined chart types may be stored in a gallery file in a specified path on each user's computer.
Although these traditional methods allow for the formatting of charts and the deployment of a consistent format to other charts, they suffer from a number of drawbacks which make these methods undesirable. First, the piece-meal method of applying fine-grain formatting to individual elements and data series in a chart is a time consuming and often frustrating process which may require a user to discover different locations for editing tools to complete each formatting task. Furthermore, in discovering the editing tools for formatting a chart, users may be presented with unfamiliar terminology and commands which must be executed to complete a formatting task. Second, the copy and paste method of spreading a format to other charts requires invoking a specialized dialog in the user's application program and selecting a specific option (i.e., “Paste Special”) which is neither easily discoverable nor intuitive. Finally, the development and deployment of user-defined chart types requires the gallery file to be overwritten whenever updates are made. Thus, any modifications or additions made to the gallery file by a user are lost when the gallery file is redeployed.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the various embodiments of the present invention have been made.